Read Online Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong by Juliet Macur - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Juliet Macur
Ads: Link
too.
Cycling was always big in Belgium—for generations, it has been one of the country’s most popular sports—and the pharmacist didn’t question Hendershot about the request for such a massive amount of drugs. In exchange, Hendershot would give the pharmacist a signed team jersey or allow him to show up at big races, where he would be a VIP with an all-access pass. Then he would leave the drugstore with bags filled with EPO, human growth hormone, blood thinners, amphetamines, cortisone, painkillers and testosterone, a particularly popular drug he’d hand to riders “like candy.”
By 1993, Armstrong was using all of those substances—like almost everyone else on the team, Hendershot said. He remembered Armstrong’s attitude from the remark, “This is the stuff I take, this is part of what I do,” and that Armstrong joined the team’s program without hesitation because everyone was doing it.
“It was like eating team dinner,” Hendershot says. He believes that virtually everyone involved in the team knew about the doping—“doctors, soigneurs , riders, team managers, mechanics—everyone.” He called the drug use casual and said he never had to hide any of it. After injecting the riders at a team hotel, he’d toss a trash bag filled with syringes and empty drug vials right into the hotel’s garbage can.
While Hendershot never administered EPO or growth hormone to Armstrong, he did administer them to other riders on the team and was aware that Armstrong was using those drugs. Hendershot said his wife, Diann, in 1995 drove a stash of those two drugs from Belgium to the team’s traning camp in southern France.
Riders like Armstrong could get drugs in several different ways—from Hendershot, from their personal doctor or a team doctor, or by buying them over the counter themselves. Each rider would bring those drugs to Hendershot and he would administer them by injecting them into the rider, by mixing a potion of them for the rider to drink or inject, or by injecting them into IVs the rider would receive, based on the doctor’s instructions. Sometimes the drugs would also come in pill form, and Hendershot would dole those out, too.
In the early 1990s, by Hendershot’s estimation, less than half the teams in the pro peloton had a doctor on staff. Those teams were ahead of the curve. “Drugs level the playing field, but the better your doctor is, the better you are going to be,” Hendershot says, adding that he believes that almost all of the doctors were administering drugs to their riders.
He said he knew substances that Testa had given the riders, but didn’t want to name them because he believes that Testa—unlike other doctors in cycling—actually cared for the riders’ health, and cared less about winning or money. Testa told me in 2006 that he never administered drugs to his riders. Hendershot put it this way, though: A doctor who refused to give riders drugs wouldn’t last in the sport.
Hendershot was constantly worried that something he was giving the riders would hurt them—or even possibly kill them—especially when he was administering substances that riders had injected into the IV bags themselves or when the riders’ personal doctors would prepare concoctions for Hendershot to give. He was concerned that he would be culpable if anything ever went wrong, but was constantly rationalizing his actions. Even as he provided drugs to riders, Hendershot said, he told himself, “You’re not a drug dealer. This isn’t organized. This is no big deal.”
He knew he was lying.
He rationalized the lie by saying the process was overseen by Testa. If the drug use was not mandated by the team, it was at least quasi-official. Hendershot trusted Testa to make sure the drugs did nothing to hurt the riders.
Armstrong liked Testa so much that he moved to Italy to be near the doctor’s office in the little town of Como, north of Milan. Not long after joining Motorola, Armstrong began to live
Cycling was always big in Belgium—for generations, it has been one of the country’s most popular sports—and the pharmacist didn’t question Hendershot about the request for such a massive amount of drugs. In exchange, Hendershot would give the pharmacist a signed team jersey or allow him to show up at big races, where he would be a VIP with an all-access pass. Then he would leave the drugstore with bags filled with EPO, human growth hormone, blood thinners, amphetamines, cortisone, painkillers and testosterone, a particularly popular drug he’d hand to riders “like candy.”
By 1993, Armstrong was using all of those substances—like almost everyone else on the team, Hendershot said. He remembered Armstrong’s attitude from the remark, “This is the stuff I take, this is part of what I do,” and that Armstrong joined the team’s program without hesitation because everyone was doing it.
“It was like eating team dinner,” Hendershot says. He believes that virtually everyone involved in the team knew about the doping—“doctors, soigneurs , riders, team managers, mechanics—everyone.” He called the drug use casual and said he never had to hide any of it. After injecting the riders at a team hotel, he’d toss a trash bag filled with syringes and empty drug vials right into the hotel’s garbage can.
While Hendershot never administered EPO or growth hormone to Armstrong, he did administer them to other riders on the team and was aware that Armstrong was using those drugs. Hendershot said his wife, Diann, in 1995 drove a stash of those two drugs from Belgium to the team’s traning camp in southern France.
Riders like Armstrong could get drugs in several different ways—from Hendershot, from their personal doctor or a team doctor, or by buying them over the counter themselves. Each rider would bring those drugs to Hendershot and he would administer them by injecting them into the rider, by mixing a potion of them for the rider to drink or inject, or by injecting them into IVs the rider would receive, based on the doctor’s instructions. Sometimes the drugs would also come in pill form, and Hendershot would dole those out, too.
In the early 1990s, by Hendershot’s estimation, less than half the teams in the pro peloton had a doctor on staff. Those teams were ahead of the curve. “Drugs level the playing field, but the better your doctor is, the better you are going to be,” Hendershot says, adding that he believes that almost all of the doctors were administering drugs to their riders.
He said he knew substances that Testa had given the riders, but didn’t want to name them because he believes that Testa—unlike other doctors in cycling—actually cared for the riders’ health, and cared less about winning or money. Testa told me in 2006 that he never administered drugs to his riders. Hendershot put it this way, though: A doctor who refused to give riders drugs wouldn’t last in the sport.
Hendershot was constantly worried that something he was giving the riders would hurt them—or even possibly kill them—especially when he was administering substances that riders had injected into the IV bags themselves or when the riders’ personal doctors would prepare concoctions for Hendershot to give. He was concerned that he would be culpable if anything ever went wrong, but was constantly rationalizing his actions. Even as he provided drugs to riders, Hendershot said, he told himself, “You’re not a drug dealer. This isn’t organized. This is no big deal.”
He knew he was lying.
He rationalized the lie by saying the process was overseen by Testa. If the drug use was not mandated by the team, it was at least quasi-official. Hendershot trusted Testa to make sure the drugs did nothing to hurt the riders.
Armstrong liked Testa so much that he moved to Italy to be near the doctor’s office in the little town of Como, north of Milan. Not long after joining Motorola, Armstrong began to live
Similar Books
